The relationships between gender and kinship in the migratory context: Beyond transnational motherhood

Abstract

Our aim with this article is to rethink the relationships between gender and kinship in the light of our respective multisite ethnographic studies, located in different migratory contexts, and from the perspective of feminist criticisms of the field of kinship contained in the anthropological discipline. After coming across the emergence of the “transnational motherhood” concept in the literature concerned with the field of study of international migration, we have had a series of discussions that we would like to share here. We believe the use of this concept is incorporating a certain scientific naturalism by assuming, as a given, the “natural” bond between women and motherhood and between biological motherhood and alleged instinctive maternal feelings, thus reifying the social/economic, domestic/public, production/reproduction, reason/emotion, own interest/ altruism dichotomies associated with the feminine/masculine in the analysis of the construction of transnational citizenship.